ARTICLES ABOUT UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND BY DATE - PAGE 2

Asa S. Knowles, president of Northeastern University from 1959 to 1975, died Saturday at his home in Boston at the age of 81. His family said he died of a heart ailment. Mr. Knowles was credited with turning Northeastern from a small night school serving commuters into a large university that pioneered cooperative education, in which students alternate academic terms with paid employment in the field for which they are training. During his tenure, Northeastern's enrollment grew from 15,000 undergraduates to 35,000.

David G. Horner, 37, former president of Barrington (R.I.) College, R.I., has been named to take the same position at North Park College, succeeding acting president Patrick A. Lattore. Horner, who holds both a doctorate and a master of business administration degree from Stanford University as well as degrees from the University of Rhode Island and Barrington, is expected to take over his duties at North Park in June. When he became president of Barrington at age 29 in 1979, he was the youngest college president in the nation.

Q--Why are nocturnal insects attracted to light? A--Nocturnal insects use the moon and bright stars as points of reference to orient themselves, according to entomologists at the University of Rhode Island and Rutgers State University. The insects keep constant track of their distance from a fixed light source to tell where they are in the dark, the entomologists said. When the light source is close to the ground, the insects often become confused because of its proximity, lose their orientation and drift toward the light, indicating that some insects have not evolved to deal with the phenomenon of man-made light.